


Monochrome

by rukafais



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, finally something that's less sad than everything else ive done, i cant guarantee you wont have Feelings about it though, small child dissociates silently through life dot txt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 12:56:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16556156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rukafais/pseuds/rukafais
Summary: Some days, it feels like they are blind, like all senses have been numbed or stolen from them. They stand upon a world they were never meant to see and cast no shadow, and they feel like an intruder.But it is true. They don’t belong here. They are alien, not living, a shadow bound in a bone-white mask. Creeping out of the darkness at the bottom of the world, not belonging to the surface where living things go-(The reminder of the world reaching out restores them little by little. Kindness is a flame that never goes out and company in the rain and a hand to hold. It is so many things that bleed colour and warmth and sound back into their head.They will always be a part of this world.)





	Monochrome

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from tumblr.
> 
> LOOK, I FINALLY MADE SOMETHING LESS SAD AND MORE CUTE, IT'S FINE.

They shake and stumble through the dark, through horror and death and danger. They quickly learn to fear the glow of orange eyes, because it means yet another thudding, awful heartbeat in their head, the sickening sound of something that was once alive now dead, now gone, devoured by the light inside. The light inside trying to get out, puppeting flesh and shell, replacing living fluid with foul sickness.

The rhythm thumps, the voice **screams** _kill destroy crush devour enemy enemy enemy_ and they try to ignore the fact that this entire kingdom is shrieking at them _THIEF MONSTER INTRUDER EMPTY EMPTY EMPTY_

They sleep, uneasy and shallow. Stealing a few moments on a cold bench, shivering in the guttering light of a quiet town.

When they wake, the world seems to have lost its luster, and they resign themselves to it. Sometimes, it just happens, and they don’t quite understand why.

( _Sometimes their heart is sick to death of this constant hostility. A shadow passes over them, at such times. A cloud covers their vision and makes everything seem lifeless, drowns their feelings deep inside until they feel nothing at all._ )

They wander, aimlessly. Walking well-trodden paths and acting entirely on instinct. Eventually, they come back to the bench again, to the surface, because even if their mind is lost in a haze their body still occasionally needs to rest.

They doze. They wake. It means nothing to them. The world is still so terribly grey.

* * *

 

They linger by the Troupe’s tents, not for any particular reason. They simply follow impulse; their goals are, for the moment, too distant to bother with.

Brumm bids them to sit, and they do, obedient and numb. They stare blankly, straight ahead, vaguely taking in colours and shapes and what is probably texture; scarlet curtains, patterned tent walls, red light on fabric. When a familiar shadow falls over them, they hardly notice.

Grimm kneels to meet their eyes, and his own narrow a little when they barely respond.

“My friend, something has changed in you,” the Troupe Master notes, a hint of worry audibly easing its way into his normal, languid tone. “Have you encountered something too heavy for your heart to bear, perhaps?”

They’re not sure why he speaks of them having a heart, or what this has to do with anything, or why he would even ask.

( _They are empty inside so there’s no point in even asking such a useless question. Useless, discarded vessel, hollow-hearted enemy. Yes._ )

Rather than nod or shake their head, they simply tilt their head to and fro, trying to look at him properly. Attempting to adjust their vision, because they’re...fairly certain he’s not usually this hard to see.

“Well, you are in quite a state, my friend. This won’t do. This won’t do at all.”

His voice seems to come from far away ( _everything does_ ), but the warmth he provides as he scoops them into his arms is...surprising. Freely given, without caveat or favour demanded.

( _Why?_ )

They relax into it without even really meaning to. That normally well-repressed loneliness, that void inside them, is too loud to ignore.

He hums softly, the low vibration of his voice resonating through them, and cradles them gently as he walks. Snatches of music that he clearly finds memorable; well-loved notes.

It is the same way they have seen him soothe his child, and it feels painful and wonderful at the same time.  It’s not something they have ever had or learned to get used to, this affection ( _this love_ ). It’s not for them. It’s not for them.

But still...

Their small fingers clutch weakly at his cloak, as if trying to decide whether to push themselves out and away or to cling on more tightly. Grimm simply makes clicking, soothing noises, and their grip loosens almost entirely.

Given the choice, they curl into the embrace. ( _It’s awkward and stiff, like they don’t know how to express it, but the amount of effort they put in shows they yearn for it nevertheless._ )

They are surrounded by warmth, to the feeling of a steadily beating heart and the sound of a song from some distant place they have never seen. A low voice and the gentle music of an accordion, bidding them to sleep.

They don’t resist.

They sleep.

( _When they stir, still held in his arms, he pats their head and tells them they’ve done well, that they should rest a little longer, and they don’t resist that either. They clutch onto his cloak, stiff and awkward  - and the unpracticed way they do it, clearly not used to such a thing, makes him inhale sharply as if in pain and hold them closer -  and drift into slumber once more._

_Everything else can wait, for a little while. Hallownest has waited hundreds of years already._

_It can wait a little more for a lonely child’s rest_.)

When next they wake, _properly_ wake, the world is a little brighter, a little warmer, and everything isn’t so far away.

* * *

 

Their wandering takes them to the fountain, in the rain. They’ve looked upon it a hundred times, and this one is no different.

Well, perhaps it’s a little different, this time.

They barely react; it feels like time is coming in stops and starts. One moment they are alone and the next moment she is there beside them, water still running down the silk thread tied to a distant point and the metal of her nail and soaking the pink of her distinctive cloak to a duller shade

She’s talking to them.

Focus. Focus.

“What are you doing?”

They don’t know how to answer. They don’t know what she’s expecting. They don’t--know. What she wants. Haven’t they already done everything she asked?

They gesture to the fountain again. To the nameplate. Remembering the first time they’d read those words.

It feels like time repeats itself; they read the words, stand at the fountain, and she is there. A cycle within a cycle, time passing and yet not.

She touches their shoulder ( _gingerly, awkwardly, because she doesn’t know how to do this either_ ) and they don’t know how to react, so they don’t. They can almost hear the frown in her voice when she speaks next.

( _Why? Why bother?_ )

“Has something happened, ghost? Are you tired? Ill?”

That’s a new angle they hadn’t considered. _Are_ they ill? The thought should terrify them, sicken them, because they have already seen one sibling consumed by plague and heard the screams of another, still bound. It haunts them even now.

They are shaking and they don’t know why. Are they cold? Are they afraid? They don’t...

They don’t feel anything and

( _they feel the struggling silence of emotions crushed in the deep, fighting to get out_ )

somehow, it scares them.

That great, terrible numbness deep inside drowns all feeling, except that lingering warmth. It’s just enough to push their hand forward, to reach out, to...

They don’t know whether they are offering their hand to her or asking that she take theirs.

She takes it, despite that awkwardness, despite that abyss of history, of lost time, of missing links between them. ( _Despite the fact she has no reason to and all the reason in the world to refuse._ ) They have never known her before this; she has never known them. All the memories in the world that they have regained cannot get back what was never there.

But she holds their hand anyway. Clumsy, awkward.

It hurts, but it hurts in the way that a healing injury does. It’s a pain that promises something is being fixed.

They come back to themselves a little more.

* * *

 

“We meet again, my small friend!” Quirrel’s jovial greeting is met by usual silence, because what else do they have, but it’s absent of enthusiasm, of reaction.

They muster just enough energy to nod, trying not to feel like the world is slipping away from them, and he kneels immediately.

He doesn’t ask them if anything is wrong, not directly; he hmms in thought and kneels and cups their face gently ( _his hands are slightly warm, but even that slight warmth melts away another barrier_ ) and tilts his head to look at them from this angle and that.

What is he even checking for? It’s ridiculous. It looks ridiculous, the way he does it.

( _Somewhere inside there is the urge to laugh, buried deep, even without a voice. That bright flare of happiness that Quirrel always inspires in them, that always pushes them to respond._

_It’s sunk deep. But at the sight of him, in the face of his casual affection, it still stirs._ )

“No? Not even that? Well! Let’s go on an adventure!”

He takes them by the hand and swings them up onto his shoulders, and they don’t resist being carried. They hadn’t really realised how tiring it was to walk everywhere until they were given other means of transportation; stagback and tramway and now, being carried by someone else.

They rest their face against his shoulder and watch the world go by. He talks to them, the whole time, even though they’ve never responded. Even though they can’t respond.

He still talks to them anyway. He still treats them like a person, not like a vessel, not a creature carrying some heavy burden; in a happier time and place, a world where things had gone differently, this could almost be the past. A cheerful archivist, a small and curious child; when they are too weary to walk, he carries them.

They don’t know where he’s going. They think they should probably know, because he would have told them, but...

But they’re tired. It’s a different kind of tired from that grey fogginess that overtakes them now; ( _that is slowly losing its grip on them little by little, being driven back_ ) it is a sudden recognition of how long they’ve wandered in this state.

Little by little, colour is pouring back into the world, and their curiosity is coming back with it. Greens and blues and purples and yellows ( _never orange_ ), a place that seems to burst with life all over again. No matter how much they travel, they never get tired of it, this overgrown wilderness, this beautiful scenery-

-they had almost forgotten that.

( _It feels like they’ve stopped drowning at last._ )

They nod off without realising it, feeling safe in Quirrel’s care, and they miss it when he slows and stops to check on them and finds them sleeping. They miss it when he laughs gently and carries them in his arms for a time.

He finds a bench and lets them rest, and rests beside them.

When they wake, the world is once again full of colour, and they’re ready for anything -

well, given a few more minutes. Quirrel dozes beside them on the bench, and they don’t want to wake him up.

They can take a little more time.


End file.
